The attempted assassination of presidential candidate Donald Trump garnered global attention over the weekend, with leaders, diplomats, and dignitaries expressing their shock at what many described as an attack on democracy.
Questions have arisen about the Secret Service’s security failures, and conspiracy theories have already begun circulating on social media platforms. Security officials admit that this confusion has fueled the U.S.’s vulnerability to its main adversaries.
“They’re always looking for opportunities to exploit our weaknesses,” former CIA Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman told US Newzs Digital. “This is our greatest strength, our democracy, but for them, it is also a vulnerability because it is visible to all of us.
“They’re going to weaponize it against us,” he said, referring to Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
Countries like Russia and China have long been known to deploy soft-war tactics against the U.S. through disinformation campaigns, malware attacks, and election meddling — all aimed at deepening divisions and eroding public trust in Western institutions.
Hoffman said Russia would fuel mistrust among agencies like Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the FBI, fuel conspiracy theories, and fuel public outrage.
“They’re looking to divide this country and make Democrats and Republicans hate each other,” he said. “They want us to not trust our democratic institutions.”
Rebecca Kofler, a former defense intelligence agency Intel official who specializes in Russian doctrine, echoed Hoffman’s warnings and explained that Moscow had assessed growing social vulnerabilities in the U.S. about a decade ago and had been acting on them ever since.
“They saw society fragmenting in different ways,” she said, pointing to the continuing political, religious, and racial divides in the U.S.
Just as Washington views Moscow as a major security concern, Koffler explained that Russia has declared itself the “number one” security threat to the U.S. and NATO.
“The Russians have decided to ‘help’ break up our society and drive it to the point of social unrest and civil war,” she added. “And that’s what we’ve seen, election interference and things of that nature.
“The assassination attempt confirmed to them that it was an achievable goal,” Koffler added.
Like Moscow, Beijing is also the U.S. The election and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] will keep an eye on any potential unrest that could lead to a confrontation of democratic values.
Heino Klink, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and military attache to China, pointed out the CCP’s prompt portrayal of the assassination attempt in its state-controlled media.
“They’re spinning it, and they’re spinning it chaotically from the standpoint of American democracy,” he told US Newzs Digital. “It’s unsafe, it’s violent, it’s unstable — regarding the Chinese population, our system is much better.”
While Russia looks to use the perceived instability in the U.S. to further undermine American faith in democracy, China seeks to use it for its own geopolitical goals.
“The Chinese government is using it for foreign audiences, as well as for Chinese domestic consumption,” Klink said. “The Chinese government tries to position itself as a partner to other countries… especially in the global south.”
“I think what they’re going to do is that Beijing is a much more reliable, stable [partner] than America.”
Klink says the CCP’s message is effective when it works against countries with authoritarian tendencies.
US democracy is not the only one under threat from the Chinese expert attack and the 2022 assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot while speaking at a political event, as well as the Slovak prime minister. Robert Fico after the government meeting.
Recent reporting after the assassination attempt on Trump suggests growing concern that instability in the US could lead to instability among other Western nations.
“This assassination attempt has met with revulsion around the world and is an attack on American democracy. I think there is tremendous concern and a sense of genuine shock about what happened,” said Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre. For Freedom, says US Newzs Digital.
But Gardiner said Trump’s response so soon after the shooting was “proof that democracy in America will not be destroyed by terrorist forces.”
“Trump’s response reassures America’s allies that democracy will not be defeated in the United States. It is strong,” he added.